Electronic communications dominate in the business world. People in cubicles sitting next to each other will often use communication channels such as email or instant messaging rather than actually talking to one another. As bizarre as this behavior might seem, it serves a useful purpose because it provides a searchable record of the communications.
While it might seem bizarre to use these communication channels in an office, with people in your immediate vicinity, it becomes essential when you are working with remotely-located staff. This is especially true when you are dealing with independent contractors, who may each have his or her preferred method of electronic communication.
With so many varied means of communication, the problem becomes one of integrating all these into a single searchable database. While emails typically have a subject line that can be used to link messages, other communications such as text messages do not have subject lines; and it becomes virtually impossible to integrate the multiple message channels into a single database and tie it to a specific subject.
Therefore, there continues to be a need for a way of integrating messages from a diverse set of platforms without requiring the user of the database to specify the subject.